4 ms·
Widower sues Wal-Mart, says bag caused death
- anigbrowl 13y agoAnd he will probably win, too. Nevada is a modified comparative negligence state, but to make that argument the defense is going to have to argue that the victim should have known the bag was inadequate to hold the quantity and type of the items within, thus upholding the plaintiff's major premise. From there it's simple for the plaintiff to argue that a grocery bagger has far more knowledge and experience of a given retailer's bag capacity than the customer who shops there occasionally, and that's before subpoenaing Walmart's training materials. considering the compensation sought is modest the smart thing to do for Walmart would be to pleas guilty or settle. The lack of predictability that a gashed toe would result in a painful death is beside the point. There's a long-established principle in tort law that you take the victim as you find him/her, and there seems to be a fairly straightforward causal chain between the injury and the death, so if the report is accurate then proximate causality shouldn't be a problem.
- tptacek 13y agoT.I.L.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
- qbrass 13y agoThe incident took place in Nebraska, if that changes anything else about your reply.
- tptacek 13y agoIt looks like NE is also a modified comparative negligence state.
- anigbrowl 13y agoThanks for spotting that, I got distracted in the middle of typing my reply. The legal principle happens to be the same in both states. If you're interested, there are basically 4 different 'fault' theories, summarized here: http://www.latitudesubro.com/misc/contributory_negligence.pdf http://www.latitudesubro.com/misc/contributory_negligence.pd... You absolutely don't want to get injured in AL, DC, NC, MD, or VA, as you'll have a hard time recovering if any aspect at all of the injury could be considered your fault.